Grisly Pictures From an Institution

By Patricia T. O'Conner

Published: December 7, 2003

THE MURDER ROOM

By P. D. James.

415 pp. New York:

Alfred A. Knopf. $25.95.

EARLY on in ''The Murder Room,'' the poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh recalls being told as a young C.I.D. recruit in the London Metropolitan Police that ''all the motives for murder are covered by four L's: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.'' P. D. James, still cooking on all burners 41 years after her first Dalgliesh novel, then proceeds to dish up all four of them. Why be stingy?

In rough outline, ''The Murder Room'' is strikingly similar to James's previous mystery, ''Death in Holy Orders.'' A beloved but anachronistic institution (this time a private museum, last time a theological college) is struggling to survive, and the trustee who wants it closed is found dead. As usual, there are enough suspects to fill the Albert Hall (about the only character we can safely rule out is the housekeeper's cat). It's up to Commander Dalgliesh and his elite team of detectives to find the guilty party and restore the natural order.

But this time something new has been added. Dalgliesh has a serious love interest: Emma Lavenham, a 31-year-old lecturer in English literature at Cambridge. Actually, she and Dalgliesh met in the previous book. In that episode, they got as far as exchanging significant glances and had even agreed at the end ''that we might get to know each other.'' (It took James less time to solve that particular string of homicides than to set Dalgliesh up with a date.)

As ''The Murder Room'' begins, several months have passed. Adam and Emma have had a few chaste meetings, and the chemistry is definitely working. The laconic Dalgliesh is smitten, but naturally he hasn't declared himself. She's never even seen his apartment! (Commitment issues, Adam? Not you, too? One imagines a chorus of readers calling from the sidelines, ''What are you waiting for?'') The major tension in the relationship is whether Emma will dump him for breaking yet another date because a corpse has turned up unexpectedly.

But first things first. What's important is that corpses do turn up, with satisfying regularity. ''The Murder Room'' is James's most suspenseful, atmospheric novel in years and has no shortage of surprise twists.

The setting is familiar territory. The eccentric little Dupayne Museum, dedicated to the years between the wars, manages to seem remote, even in London. Housed in an old mansion tucked away on the fringes of Hampstead Heath (tantalizingly spooky by night), it's the perfect crime scene. Its galleries and exhibition halls explore English life from 1919 to 1938 -- history, literature, the arts, sports, cinema, even murder. The Murder Room of the title, the museum's most popular attraction, contains a collection of photos, newspaper clippings and exhibits from the most notorious crimes of the era -- real crimes, according to an author's note.

Here the book takes off and displays James at her best. Why showcase murders alongside paintings and first editions? Because, as one character explains, ''murder, the unique crime, is a paradigm of its age.'' Each of the murders on exhibit ''couldn't have happened at any other time, not in precisely the way it did happen.'' There's the Thompson-Bywaters case of 1922 (husband stabbed to death by wife's jealous lover). There's the Blazing Car Murder of 1930 (victim burned to death in car). There's the infamous Wallace case of 1931 (wife bludgeoned, case never solved). There's the Brighton Trunk Murder of 1934 (mistress stuffed into trunk). And so on. In each one, an odd element or circumstance makes the case peculiar to its time. (I like to imagine Baroness James researching all this in the British Library, whooping with delight and being told to keep her voice down.)

As with many of James's novels, we know right away which character is most likely to exit feet first. And a spectacular exit it is. Dr. Neville Dupayne, who had threatened to close the museum, goes out in a blaze of glory, burning to death in the driver's seat of his vintage Jaguar in a garage on the museum grounds. Echoes of the famous Blazing Car Murder! Mere coincidence or a copycat killer at work?

The two remaining trustees, Neville's siblings, Marcus and Caroline Dupayne, who want to keep the museum going, are among the suspects. But it's a crowded field. The curator, James Calder-Hale, has some mysterious link with M.I.5 and is given to furtive nighttime assignations on the Heath. The secretary, Muriel Godby, worships Caroline and would do anything for her. Marie Strickland, a museum volunteer, has a wartime past and secrets she would prefer to keep. A second volunteer, Mrs. Faraday, knows Neville had been clandestinely carrying on with her daughter-in-law. And we can't overlook Marcus's ambitious wife, the victim's emotionally unstable daughter, a disgruntled museumgoer, the volatile gardener-handyman and assorted psychiatric patients of the less-than-popular Dr. Dupayne.

Just as the investigation starts looking hopelessly complicated, a second victim gets it in the neck. Joining the throng of suspects are a Lord, a couple of Ladies and a nasty zillionaire industrialist, not to mention the habitués of a kinky sex club privately operating out of the museum at night. Heavens, who doesn't have a motive?